


The Toll of Hours

by GreenElphaba



Category: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (TV 2012)
Genre: Turtlecest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-29
Updated: 2015-01-29
Packaged: 2018-03-09 15:20:31
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,138
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3254621
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GreenElphaba/pseuds/GreenElphaba
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Raph is not a fan of introspection, but if the world is too quiet, there isn't much choice. A later companion piece to Midnight Bargain. Spoilers for the very end of season 2/beginning of season three.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Toll of Hours

The Toll of Hours

 

            The sides of the tub were that sort of slick that always feels wet, even when dry. Raph kept finding himself wiping his hands against his thighs. “What do you say to an unconscious turtle?” he muttered. It was a whatchamacallit, rhetorical question, which was good, because his brother didn’t answer.

            “Come on man, wake up,” he muttered, but that didn’t work either, any more than it had the hundred or so other times he’d tried it over the last few months. He shifted in his chair, leaned over the lip of the tub, trying to get comfortable on the hard chair. It didn’t work, of course. It never worked. Every day Raph thought that this would be the day he gave this up. Go train more. Learn to cook. Draw something cool on the side of the barn. Anything but be here, in this sickbed-cloister room, waiting for a deliverance that seemed to recede with every passing day.

            He reached out, touched the scar on Leo’s shoulder where Shredder had so nearly ended his life. The wound was healed, at least as far as they could tell. The other cuts, scrapes and bruises were long gone. No way to tell about internal damage, with Leo still sleeping, his mind lost far beyond something as mundane as pain, and the brother who hated to stay and couldn’t bear to leave.

            The blood had been warm on his neck and shoulder, he remembered, as he carried his brother from the wrecked apartment. At first Raph had assumed it was from that dreadful wound, but it wasn’t. It was from Leo’s _mouth_ , a drizzle that didn’t stop, that crept into the cracks of Raph’s shell. It was a dire warning of the damage they couldn’t see, and Leo was so _limp_ , barely breathing, his blood decorating the floor instead of remaining inside him where it belonged, and Raphael had never been so unhappy in his life to see his own color everywhere.

            He shut his eyes, closed them hard until the darkness tricked his mind into putting the memories away. “I love you,” he said with his eyes still shut, a little angry that even with so much distance already between them, he had to increase it just to say the words. He opened his eyes again, hoping beyond hope for a flash of blue—it would be worth it to be caught, if he could have Leo back again—but there was nothing.

            There was a footstep in the hall outside and Raph drew his hand back, sat up, folded his arms like this waiting was merely boring, instead of the worst thing he’d ever had to do. Donnie came in, with a bowl of soup. Raphael knew that much without even looking. It was the same every day. “Any change?” Donnie asked, and that was the same every day too. Only the slowly lessening hope showed the passage of time.

            “Nope,” he replied. “One turtle, asleep. Rip van Turtle, gonna leave us out here for a hundred years.”

            Donnie walked over, became a green blur in Raph’s peripheral vision. “Do you want a break?” he asked.

            “Nah,” Raph said briskly. “Gimme the soup. I’m getting good at this.” He was, too. Good at feeding his comatose brother, keeping his body alive just in case he might want to use it again someday, as unlikely as that seemed to be.

            Donnie didn’t hand it over immediately, and this small act of rebellion got Raph’s attention, drew his gaze away from Leo, at least for a moment. “What?” he asked.

            Donnie sighed. “We’re a little worried about you, too. Are you really okay up here? It has, very literally, been days since you left this room for anything other than meals and the bathroom.”

            “That’s not true,” Raph said. “I took a walk on Tuesday.”

            Donnie didn’t look impressed. “That was last Tuesday, Raph. As in, nearly two weeks ago.”

            Raphael shrugged. “Okay, fine. So what?”

            “So, you need to either start emerging from time to time, or you need to take a break completely and let someone else babysit Leo for a while.”

            Raph scowled at his younger brother, but Donnie was unfazed, and Raph guessed he probably had at least April backing him up on this, and maybe Mikey and Casey too. “Fine,” he conceded, with poor grace. “Gimme the soup and I’ll come out and say hi to everyone later. Stretch my legs.”

            “Okay.” Donatello handed over the bowl and turned to go, but paused in the doorway. “He’s going to be okay, Raph.”

            “Sure he is,” Raph said, no longer looking at his little brother. “You bet. Any day now.” He wondered if Donnie believed that. It sounded pretty good, pretty normal. Maybe a little on the sarcastic side, but that was normal too, in its way.

            When the door shut and Donnie’s steps receded, Raph moved his chair up by Leo’s head. “Okay, you pain in the shell. Dinner time.” That hurt, unexpectedly, hurt for no reason he could easily discern. Raph dropped his gaze to the steaming bowl while he wrestled with the pain, clenched his jaw around it, pummeled it back down to wherever it came from, wherever it belonged. “You gotta wake up,” he whispered to the soup, and it was only steam making his vision blur. “I miss you, man. Your stupid smile and your stupid plans and your stupid…everything. If it was me in this tub I bet you’d read me poetry or something. I don’t even know any poetry. I just know this thing…” He hunched his shoulders, “this thing doesn’t work without you. Me. I don’t work without you.” He shut his eyes, gritted his teeth, feeling moisture burn like acid down his cheeks, scalding him. “I miss your kisses, and your lectures. I miss the look on your stupid, puffy-eyed face when I come to your room at night. Please, Leo. The thought that you might really be gone…that you could just go away somewhere and your body might keep working until it’s too wasted on soup to live any longer…I can’t take it. This isn’t how you’re supposed to end.” He rested his forehead on the lip of the tub, wanting to feel a sudden touch on his head, wanting it like water, like sex, like god, but it didn’t come. Eventually he got himself under control and sat up. “I guess you don’t care much if the soup is hot or cold,” he told the closed eyes. He hated this ragdoll brother, and hated himself even more, for how pure and simple the love seemed now, for all the things he’d never said to anyone who could hear him. He stirred the soup absently, and fed his brother.

**Author's Note:**

> For some reason this morning I came home from work and made a fanfiction. Oh, turtle boys, it was worth shorting my sleep for you. I got so many nice comments on the other one, I thought I would see what popped out of my hands if I looked the other way for awhile. Several people were very kind. Is it bad manners to name them? Jade, Ann, Lassenby, and TyF will be the people offended, then. Thank you all.


End file.
